The Cure: Of, By and for The People

A note from the author — September 2026

This book preserves the text of its original published edition. Since publication, the transition strategy has continued to develop through further research, reflection, and practical systems analysis.

The earlier model of a coordinated, near-simultaneous "Transition Day" has been superseded. The current approach is gradual, voluntary, cumulative, and community-based. It begins by solving concrete problems, building trustworthy cooperative institutions, testing them under real conditions, and allowing dependence on existing systems to diminish only as safer alternatives can reliably carry their functions. See the current Transition Roadmap.

The commitment to nonviolence is absolute as a principle and strategy of Transition. Transition does not initiate, organize, threaten, or employ violence to impose change, seize institutions, punish opponents, or overcome resistance. It does not authorize armed factions, retaliatory violence, or collective force described as "self-defense."

This principle does not require a person to submit passively to an immediate physical assault or to abandon someone being attacked. When avoidance, withdrawal, de-escalation, shielding, and summoning help cannot stop an imminent threat, a person may use only the minimum protective action necessary to stop the immediate harm or enable escape. That action must cease the moment the danger ends, and afterward every injured person — regardless of their role — must receive prompt, impartial, and compassionate care.

Some passages in this book, particularly in Part 2, reflect an earlier and less precise formulation of these questions. Where the original wording conflicts with the current position, it appears with a visible annotation. These passages are preserved rather than silently removed, because every human undertaking will sometimes fall short of its own principles. A system capable of surviving and improving must be able to recognize those moments without shame, acknowledge them without deflection, and correct them without concealing its history.